The use of distributed computer systems has been gaining mass appeal over the last few years. The need for enterprises to more effectively use corporate resources and the desire to locate employees at various remote locations from corporate headquarters, pose challenges for most system administrators. In these distributed network systems, the need to keep the network available without constant interruptions is very important. Thus, the need to also manage and monitor the network has become a critical function in many enterprises. Changes in computer interconnect technology are creating new possibilities for managing and monitoring computer network architecture to ensure uninterrupted availability of corporate networks.
These new high performance networking management systems make it possible to manage network workloads and devices and to response to system failures in an expedited manner.
FIG. 1A is a prior art depiction of a network management system 100. The prior art system illustrated in FIG. 1A comprises three layer component of a console layer 101A-101B, a server layer 110 and a host layer 120A-120C.
The console layer 101A-101B comprises multiple consoles serving multiple users for the network management system 100. The consoles 101A-101B provide visual representations of managed objects (for example, hosts and networks) to users of the network management system 100. The consoles 101A-101B also provide users with the ability to manipulate attributes and properties associated with the managed objects and the ability to initiate management tasks (for example, dynamic reconfiguration of a host or a device).
The server layer 110 accepts requests from users through the consoles 101A-101B and passes these requests to the appropriate host. The server 110 then relays the response from the agent back to the user. For example, if a user wants information on the number of users accessing a host, the server 110 receives this request from any one of console 101A-101, and sends the request to that particular host. The host finds the requested information and passes it back to the server which then transmits the information to the user via the console 101A-101B. The server 110 also provides the console 101A-101B with a secure entry point to interface with the hosts 120A-120C.
The hosts 120A-120C perform the actual tasks of information gathering, monitoring and management of objects on the nodes managed by the network management system 100. The server 110 interacts with the hosts 120A-120C to gain access to managed objects on the network.
The prior art network management environment shown in FIG. 1A supports graphic application interface based consoles. When the user logs into server 110, the user is provided a browser window as shown in FIG. 1B. The browser window 130 shown in FIG. 1B is a screen shot illustration of the main browser window that the user sees when the user logs into the network management system 100. The browser window 130 comprises a hierarchy view window 135, a contents view window 140, expansion icon 145, compression icon 150, module icon 155 and options icon 160.
The hierarchy window 135 provides the user with a hierarchy view of the relationship between the host and its modules. The hierarchy view defines named objects in a hierarchy or tree relationship to one another. Objects are grouped depending on the rank of the object in the hierarchy. In the example shown in FIG. 1B, the host has a loaded operating system module MIB-II instrumentation (simple), etc. The user can browse the network by pointing and clicking on the particular resource the user wishes to access in the hierarchy view window 135 or the content view window 140. By using the browser window 130, the user can set system parameters and view a graph of monitored data properties for a particular. The expansion icon 145 and compression icon 150 enable the user to view an expanded or compressed graphical view of network resources.
Although the prior art system illustrated in FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B provides the user with the convenience of using a graphics application interface device to browse a particular network, the prior art system does not provide this functionality for users that do not have such graphics application interfaces such as text-based computer consoles, personal digital assistants (PDAs), etc.